Primary School 8/18
what's the dnc calamari guy's take on RI-01
Howdy! This week we lead with the rapidly-approaching special election for RI-01.
RI-01
Early voting has begun in the Democratic primary, and the race is getting even more heated. While the state Board of Elections’s belated vetting of Sabina Matos’s petitions confirmed that she had enough valid signatures to make the ballot despite apparent fraud on the part of certain petition-gatherers, the scandal did real damage to the race’s onetime frontrunner, and it showed at a recent debate where the target of the most criticism wasn’t Matos, but her leading progressive rival, Aaron Regunberg. Opponents grilled Regunberg on the super PAC his father-in-law is running to support Regunberg, ostensibly without coordinating with Regunberg’s campaign. Regunberg deflected the questions and highlighted Matos’s more extensive super PAC support—which grew this week with an additional $376,000 in spending from Elect Democratic Women and EMILY’s List. Matos directed her own fire at Biden administration aide Gabe Amo, her toughest competitor in the establishment lane, for his past as a lobbyist for Home Depot. And in what we hope is a sign that other candidates don’t see centrist self-funder Don Carlson as a serious threat, it fell to the moderators to grill Carlson about whether he’s trying to buy himself a seat in Congress (yes, that’s what self-funding is.)
Endorsements came in on all sides this week:
Amo landed the endorsement of UAW Region 9A, which represents workers in a number of Northeastern states including Rhode Island, and New Bedford, MA Mayor Jon Mitchell
Regunberg was endorsed by state Sen. Tiara Mack, a progressive formerly affiliated with the Rhode Island Political Co-Op
State Sen. Ana Quezada was endorsed by former Co-Op candidate Clara Hardy, the latest sign that the Co-Op network prefers Quezada
State Sen. Sandra Cano was endorsed by state Rep. Edie Ajello, antiabortion state Senate President Dominick Ruggerio, the Lincoln, RI Democratic Town Committee, and the Rhode Island Federation of Teachers
Matos was endorsed by Nick Autiello, who dropped out of this race shortly before the filing deadline
Finally, here’s a roundup of independent expenditures made in the last week.
For Sabina Matos:
$250K of TV ads from Women Vote! (EMILY’s List)
$150K of TV ads from Elect Democratic Women
$975 of mailers from Latino Victory Fund
For Aaron Regunberg:
$18K of mailers from Progress Rhode Island (Aaron’s in-laws)
For Don Carlson:
$14K of mailers from the LGBTQ Victory Fund
AZ-03
In a major shakeup to the state of this election, Laura Pastor is dropping out of the race. Pastor claims this is the result of health problems, and we don’t necessarily disbelieve her, but we also don’t expect her to re-enter the race; as things stood before Pastor left, Raquel Terán had party support, Yassamin Ansari had the money, and Pastor had to do something differently if she wanted to win.
On Friday of last week, local school board member Ylenia Aguilar exited the Democratic primary for AZ-03. Not even 24 hours later, Dr. Duane Wooten entered. Wooten is considered prominent, as far as pediatricians go. He makes house calls, has medical awards, and, importantly, has had his own practice for decades. Doctors can make good political candidates, both for knowing a large number of people in a single geographical area, and for knowing which wealthy people to ask for money, especially if they run their own business. Wooten will be starting from behind the frontrunners, Terán and Ansari.
IL-05
Dan Wozniczka, an epidemiologist and semi-well known CDC whistleblower, is going to be running for Congress, as reported by Shia Kapos in the Politico Illinois Playbook. He’ll be seeking the Democratic nomination in the 5th district, currently held by moderate bench-warmer Mike Quigley, who may be about to learn the wisdom of the saying “shit or get off the pot” after contemplating running for mayor of Chicago but passing for the third (fourth, maybe? oh, who cares) time last year despite seemingly only being in the US House as a stepping stone to…something in the future. Wozniczka hasn’t said much about his ideological leanings, but given that Illinois has a March primary, we imagine we’ll be learning more about him soon.
MD-Sen/MD-06
Maryland’s freshman Senator Chris Van Hollen endorsed Prince George’s County Executive Angela Alsobrooks to succeed his counterpart Ben Cardin. Van Hollen’s endorsement removes any ambiguity that the establishment in Maryland has chosen Alsobrooks, and Maryland is a very establishment-friendly state. This leaves Rep. David Trone in a tough position—as nice as it is to have unlimited money to spend on an election, diminishing returns set in fast, and it’s going to be very difficult to buy his way out of the hole he’s in. So difficult, in fact, that we can’t help but wonder if this election is going to reach a point where Trone realizes it’s hopeless and decides to run for reelection to Congress instead.
MN-03
Dean Phillips update: no, he isn’t shutting up.
Last week we covered Phillips’s surprising role as the highest-profile Democrat still fishing for a primary challenger to Biden. (Any challenger Phillips, a moderate and a member of the misnamed Problem Solvers Caucus, might back is, at minimum, not going to be to Biden’s left.) We covered it mostly because other Democrats, including prominent ones, had begun to tell him to knock it off or he could risk facing a primary challenger of his own. At the time it was an open question whether he would knock it off, but not any longer, it seems. Dean Phillips may somehow post himself into the most difficult election of his life. We’re hoping he does, anyway.
MN-05
Ilhan Omar was endorsed for reelection by the Congressional Black Caucus PAC, which forcefully defends Black incumbents and generally prizes seniority. She’s likely to need such a defense, given AIPAC’s reported interest in backing a challenger—and she’s not making things easy for herself, either. According to new financial disclosures, Omar was one of several lawmakers who took a trip funded by the Qatari government for the World Cup as part of the Qatari regime’s PR campaign, meant to deflect attention from the forced labor and abuse of migrant workers involved in building up the Gulf petrostate’s World Cup facilities. Omar’s past criticism of Israeli influence campaigns (all-expenses-paid overseas trips to woo lawmakers are a hallmark of Israel’s influence on the Hill) simply does not square with her acceptance of a lavish vacation in service of a different authoritarian state’s own influence operation, and conservative media has noticed.
TX-07
Pervez Agwan is having a minor moment. First was the news, last week, that Justice Democrats may be considering picking him as one of the few non-incumbents they’ll support for the cycle, and this week he earned his first major endorser: Minnesota AG and onetime DNC Chair candidate Keith Ellison.
CA-SD-09/CA-AD-15
The California Senate will finally be rid of Republican-supporting, union busting, anti-tax senator Steve Glazer. Glazer, possibly the most conservative Democrat in the Senate, and definitely the most conservative Democrat in the Senate not from a competitive district, was probably banned from running for reelection thanks to term limits, but Glazer had been gearing up to fight in court about whether partial terms should count. He evidently has come to the conclusion that he would lose that battle, and has endorsed Assemb. Tim Grayson as his successor instead. Though Grayson is also a moderate, albeit not quite as bad as Glazer, Glazer pushing Grayson to run for the Senate isn’t born of altruism—Glazer could run for that Assembly seat once Grayson leaves it.
NM State Senate
This is more of a “where are they now” than an actual news item, but we’d just like to point out that Gabriel Ramos, one of the conservaDems who primary voters tossed out of the NM Senate in 2020, has filed for a rematch with now-Sen. Siah Correa Hemphill…as a Republican. Primary challenges: they help take out the trash.
NY-AD-37
Juan Ardila (D-Sex Pest) has attracted another two new primary challengers almost a year out from the actual election. You may be familiar with Hailie Kim, a teacher, immigrant, and former organizer for MinKwon Center for Community Action, who ran for Council twice and managed to, this year, hold incumbent Julie Won to a 61%-39% margin despite receiving basically no outside help. Within the boundaries AD-37, that margin was only 59%-41%. Kim, a socialist, may not have actually launched a campaign yet, but should be considered a top contender, both for the overall race, and for the DSA endorsement. Conventional wisdom is that District Leader Émilia Decaudin has the inside track for DSA support given that she already represents the district, but Kim’s entry ensures it won’t be a coronation. Also in DSA is the other new contender, activist Claire Valdez, who we have less information on, but does seem to have been involved in DSA electoral efforts before, including the successful campaign to elect Samy Nemir Olivares to District Leader (in a different district). Valdez should naturally also be a contender for the DSA endorsement.
Baltimore Mayor/Baltimore City Council President
Last week, Baltimore Mayor Brandon Scott breathed a sigh of relief that Comptroller Bill Henry decided to run for reelection instead of challenging Scott, and this week Scott got to do the same for Councilmember Eric Costello, who also decided reelection was a more fruitful pursuit than challenging Scott. Costello did make an endorsement for Nick Mosby for City Council President. Mosby is running for reelection after winning the primary 40%-29% against Scott-backed Shannon Sneed in 2020; he has incumbency on his side this time, but is weighed down by his strained relationships with others in city government and his soon-to-be-ex-wife Marilyn’s upcoming trial on charges of perjury and mortgage fraud. Mosby is being challenged by Councilmember Zeke Cohen, who picked up Unite Here! Local 7 this week.
Boston City Council
Planned Parenthood Advocacy MA made its endorsements for Boston City Council this week, and they decided to avoid the messy contests in Districts 5 and 6 entirely (not that we blame them.) They endorsed only three at-large candidates: progressive incumbents Ruthzee Louijeune and Julia Mejia, plus Wu administration aide Henry Santana. In District 1, they endorsed Gabriela Coletta, whose reelection is a foregone conclusion, and in the open District 3, they backed labor lawyer Matt Patton, who faces a crowded field including well-funded establishment favorite John FitzGerald and DSA-backed teacher and repeat candidate Joel Richards. Councilors Kendra Lara and Ricardo Arroyo, both already dealing with damaging scandals of their own, were named alongside Mejia in a newly-released complaint by a Boston City Council staff attorney alleging a hostile work environment; however, the alleged “hostility” sounds like Lara, Arroyo, and Mejia simply disagreed with the attorney about city council rules. Still, it’s a headline Lara and Arroyo don’t need.
Connecticut Mayors
Connecticut may be the most difficult state in the country to get on a primary ballot. Candidates can either win the designation from their party, or get 2% of party members to sign a ballot petition over a specific 42 day period (for legislative candidates it's a grueling 5% in 14 days).
In Hartford that works out to a requirement of 1,820 in an election where about 10,000 people actually vote. The four-candidate field running for mayor of Hartford was not destined to last—in fact, four candidates have made the ballot only a single time in the last three decades. The weakest link turned out to be Councilmember Nick Lebron, who turned in just over 1,000 signatures. The ballot will officially consist of party designee Arunan Arulampalam and state Sens. Eric Coleman and John Fonfara.
In New Haven, incumbent Justin Erlicker got to the ballot by winning the party nomination over cop Shafiq Abdussabur and former McKinsey consultant Tom Goldenberg. He'll be joined by only one opponent: Hartford Inspector General Liam Brennan. You read that right—both challengers who sought the party nomination failed to make the ballot, and only Liam Brennan, a former federal prosecutor who has spent the last few years fighting with Hartford's police department to establish oversight and who sounds an awful lot like a progressive actually managed to get enough signatures despite being enough of an outsider that he didn't even bother with the party convention. Abdussabur is trying to get on the ballot by court order, but his odds are slim.
In Bridgeport, incumbent embarrassment Joe Ganim may win the primary by default because state Sen. Marilyn Moore, who only narrowly lost to Ganim in 2019, wasn't able to get enough of her submitted signatures accepted to cross the threshold of 2,033. For reference, there were 9,171 votes cast in the last Bridgeport mayoral primary.
Cook County, Illinois
Cook County Democrats announced their 2024 primary slate, and progressives largely got what they wanted. The Cook County Democratic Committee endorsed Clayton Harris III, Toni Preckwinkle’s reform-oriented preferred candidate for State’s Attorney, and Mariyana Spyropoulos, a local water board member who is challenging conservative Circuit Court Clerk Iris Martinez. It wasn’t an unvarnished win for Preckwinkle and local progressives; they had preferred a different Martinez challenger, Spyropoulos’s fellow water board member Eira Corral Sepúlveda, but Spyropoulos clinched the endorsement with union support. It’s not clear yet whether Corral Sepúlveda will continue her campaign, as she had previously said she would not run against the county party’s slated candidate. Still, it’s a big step towards retiring Martinez, an obstinate machine power player who went all in for Paul Vallas’s mayoral campaign.
Houston Mayor
The Texas Organizing Project (TOP), the Service Employees International Union (SEIU) and the Communication Workers of America (CWA) all endorsed Rep. Sheila Jackson Lee for mayor this week. Jackson Lee is currently down in polling, and will need all the help on the ground she can muster to defeat conservative Democratic state Sen. John Whitmire.
Minneapolis City Council
Filing for the Minneapolis Council races is finished. While there were no real surprises in the immediate sense of candidates who were expected to file and didn’t, it’s still abstractly surprising to see who filed in District 2, or more accurately who didn’t. Councilmember Robin Wonsley is officially unopposed—something no one would have seen coming four years ago when the non-DFL candidate won by just 13 votes. The full list of candidates can be found here.
Nashville Mayor
Even though they lost, Rick Caruso and Paul Vallas demonstrated how Republicans can run in a nonpartisan contest for mayor in a very Democratic city and remain competitive: unify the business ghouls behind you to ensure you can outspend your opponent, peel off a handful of more moderate unions and politicians who worry they’ll be left out in the cold if a progressive is in charge, and then find a wedge issue to hammer relentlessly.
This week, the Nashville Business Coalition endorsed Freddie O’Connell for mayor. The business community in Nashville is, at best, lukewarm on O’Connell, and some business owners with deep pockets outright hate him. Declining to back Alice Rolli, and making the step of actively supporting O’Connell, is something they’d only do if they expected a blowout O’Connell win.
Also endorsing O’Connell was not only the Central Labor Council (as expected) but also the firefighters union, traditionally one of the easiest gets for Republicans. The police union, an absolute gimmie for the more conservative candidate in any mayoral contest, is still staying on the sidelines. The state of Rolli’s outreach to moderate Democrats is either nonexistent or an absolute failure. Her biggest get so far is independent and single term former school board member Fran Bush, who also ran for mayor this year, and garnered 503 votes—placing her 11th out of 12 candidates, with less than half a percent of the vote. Rolli’s campaign felt this “key endorsement” was important enough to warrant a press release.
Okay, so Rolli is striking out on business and moderate Democrat support, but does she at least have a wedge issue to peel away voters? Right now the biggest Rolli-related story in local news is that she had to fire a staffer for being too open about his connections to the Proud Boys, a pathetic white supremacist gang whose leaders are currently facing three decades in federal prison for storming the capitol.
This is not a competitive race, and we will not be pretending like it might be. If there was any doubt that getting into a runoff with Rolli was functionally the same as winning outright for O’Connell, the last two weeks have dispelled that idea. The only intrigue left is what the final margin is going to look like.
Seattle City Council District 1
Results from the primary in the 1st District were decidedly inconclusive. Progressive Maren Costa finished first, but she only secured 33% of the vote, and everyone else running was to her right in some way. Rob Saka, the moderate who scored the other general election spot, may have taken only 24% of the vote, but that doesn’t seem like much of an advantage when you account for Phil Tavel, the moderates’ standard-bearer in 2019, taking 20% this time around. We called the final results “murky” as far as determining the favorite for the general election, but from a context-free reading of the results, you might have an easier time arguing that Saka is the favorite than Costa is.
That’s why it’s such a big deal that everyone else who ran seems to fucking hate the guy, so much so that all six of them made a joint endorsement for Costa. The Fuck Rob Coalition represents 42% of the voters, and while those voters in abstract preferred a more moderate candidate to Costa, they all bucked the Seattle Times endorsement, which means they’re not all ideological hardliners. This is likely to be the most significant development of the general elections in District 1, and we’re only two weeks into the campaign.